Wednesday, October 7, 2015

On the daily diary of events I intend to attend this month, is the Pink Tea at the Grand Hyatt. The event is on Thursday October 8th and Wednesday October 28th from 3pm-8pm. I will attend on the 28th most like, though no set time yet. Maybe two of us OPNOs will go, depending on work, husbands, kids ect... probably at 4 or 5pm. The event is to benefit the Oman Cancer Association, so yeah, I'll forgo the champagne, but who can't be a lady for a couple hours to eat some cake and drink some tea for a good cause?

That would make my father laugh, since he and I rarely ever donated anything to cancer research or charities ect... He isn't a man to attend charity functions, unless it was to work in a food bank and feed people dinner on Christmas eve.

Despite having many female relatives (and the Shatti girls of Muscat) who firmly intended that this OPNO girl become one of those women who lunch, who have no work other than to care about other people, I was raised by my father to be the very opposite of that.

Yes, yes, I still did the whole cottilion thing, and I do have a thing for porcelain tea sets, and embroidered white napkins (perferrably monogrammed), and I love tea and petit fours and macaroons and alllllllll that. Let it be said that I am an old-fashioned "elitist" or a "snob" when it comes to fashion or interior design and beautiful traditions like afternoon tea, but at least you can't say that about me, when it comes to politics, religion, people or work, and that's something I owe entirely to my father.

My father likes a cup of tea. In a mug. Paper napkins are more his thing. He thinks, what is the point of a macaroon or a petit four when you can have an entire cake for the same price. He'd never do a charity lunch. If he was gonna help people, he'd do it in person, with his own hands. He does soup kitchen, builds houses for people, helps people, drives people places. That's my Dad.

Yet, there's some things, you can't help with in person, or with just your own hands. Things like Cancer.

My father met my mother when she was a single unmarried mother (and she didn't have the excuse of being a widow--or a divorcee-as my grandmother would insist I mention) with a baby. He taught me to value people for what they are capable of, not where they've come from or who they've been, despite where he'd come from.

When my brother was tragically killed (he didn't die, he was killed) my father married my mother, even though he knew she was never the same person after that event. Suicidal, occasionally violent, incapable of dealing with grief or anger or forgiving... which is why they eventually divorced... and then got married again, and divorced again... and why he helps her out and feels sorry for her even though he shouldn't anymore.

She had more kids (of which I was one) and she stayed home as a housewife, while my father worked. I was a little Princess. There is no toy or dress I did not get. I was one of those kids who got a pony and thought I was hard done by when my father said no to ballet lessons but got me leotards and tutus and leg warmers to play dress up in instead (he knew I generally have no follow-through for stuff like karate or horse-riding or figure skating so ballet would be another waste). I don't really know how much of that was my mother and how much of that was my father but I am certain, my father thought it was a bad idea and I was spoiled but the money came from him.

When it came down to it, he took us on without my mother, and us (as youngins) and as teens. Spoiled, stubborn, independent persons already. Yet he managed. He learned to brush hair into ponytails, he built dollhouses, taught us how to do dishes, and to value money and to work. He told us about driving, about buying a house, what to buy what not to buy.

My mother taught me how to dream, but my father taught me how not to live in dreams but how to build them. When to love something, and when to let it go, even love when it is not enough or unhealthy.

When I became a Muslim he was deeply disapointed in me, because he taught me to study religion and cultures, and peoples, not in prejudice or preference of any of them. To him, one does not need a book to guide one to right, and good and justice, but that these things are in all of us. We should know right from wrong. Loving one another, being brave, defending weak people, that's what everyone knows is right, he says.

I wish that were true, but my experience tells me other. Perhaps I don't believe that people have that, that perhaps even me, I have more bad than good, so I need a book with hopes and dreams more than my knowledge of what my own inner self allows me;).

Anyways, when he came to Oman, all the Muslims that he met (especially women--- for Omani women sure do tend to admire a man who raises daughters alone) fell in love with him and told me how lucky I was to have a father like him. They say of him, if he was a Muslim, what a Muslim he would be!

He laughs when I tell him this. He said if he had a holy book, then maybe he'd twist words as an excuse to be lazy or less than what is in his heart already.

His heart thinks tea should be had in a mug. That food should come on heaping platters if you pay more than 6 rials for a main. The father who (despite admitting he hates the idea of being gay himself) once stood up alone armed only with a stick, to a drunk mob of guys from my town who were lighting a house on fire to get a gay friend of mine to come out so they could beat the kid up to a pulp or worse. My father at that moment, gave me the fighting advice: "Go for the leader and act like you're crazy, that's the only chance that you have with a mob". He could hang curtains, buy cars, build walls, re-do a bathroom plumbing electricity tiling, all, do stone masonry, take out a torch and make a metal gazebo or garage frame or what have you. He loved sailing, but sold his sailboat so my mother could have a house for us, even after they divorced and she took his first house then couldn't afford its upkeep.

His heart tells him to fight to save people or get their basic rights even it meant getting thrown into jail or losing his job or even physically hurt. He gets mad at me when I do the same of course, if I risk a job or comfort or safety doing what I know is right and must be done by someone, so why not me if I know it? But I got that from him...

...The father who saves and then, finds out that he is dying, doesn't just spend all his money on himself, but gives it away to those in his life who need it. Who he thinks honour and duty and him to first, then those whose need is greatest if there is any left over.

I laugh and tell him, if he beats this and lives, he's gona have nothing at all left, and he's welcome to come stay with me, in the house he helped me buy.

My father says I am judgemental. Because I judge people by how I think they should behave. I do. But how I think people should behave comes from the example I have seen in my father. Honour, duty, charity, harsh plain truth, seeking knowledge, doing plain honest work, not expecting anything from anyone but yourself, being brave when you must or know no one else will. That's my father, that's my dad, and there's really nothing I or anyone else can do to fight or defend or help him these days. Nothing much he can do either, except letting a bunch of Muslims pray for him, even though he doubts in their prayers.

My father is sick and dying of cancer. As a Muslim, since he is not a Muslim, I am so sad. He has lived longer than most, and actually some of the only practical research towards a cure pertinent to his kind of cancer is being done in Oman. I was going to blog about that research but one of the other OPNO girls is actually doing that kind of work so I'll let her do it.

So while I never much gave thought to cancer research (or medical research) as something to put any charity time or money towards, when there's starving people in the world, people in physical danger in the world, people freeezing to death in the world, or simple troubles people I know need quick fixes for, I guess it is. Because some things they had no cure for 20 years ago, they have a cure for now, and maybe in ten years, there'll be a cure for things they have no cure for now.

That'd be grand, if some girl whose father was like mine, didn't have to deal with the depressing news that my family got. That there is nothing beyond miracles that exists to be done or to try at this time.

So, for all the fathers and mothers or family members or friends who either enabled you to be a lady who lunches, or taught you how to be a lady who can buy and make her own lunch, a little tea at the Hyatt in their honour (even if you have to keep it a secret from them because they'd say its stupid) is something I will do my damndest to make it to this October the 28th.

Because I always see my father sipping his cup of tea by the fireplace, telling me about his day, or discussing the news, and all the small but important lessons that make a person gleaned from that small but precious time.

Sorry for this long post (wipes a tear) it wasn't meant to be this long or rambling.

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This blog is [now] a combinination of the stories and experiences of three [now two] women into the character of one [so no one can mouth one or the other]. Just a quick favour to beg, if anyone reading this blog guesses any one of our IRL (in real life) identities, please hold off on puting it in the comments box. Jazzakallah kheir! And please ask before taking any images off a post. Other than that, carry on!

About Me

I am just another Bedouin Victorian girl living her life in the Khaleej (aka Arabian/Persian Gulf). I currently reside in the Sultanate of Oman. I occasionally write for the blog "How to Live like an Omani Princess" and usually BADLY edit it.